Netanyahu says passengers and crew on a FlyDubai flight managed to subdue an attacker, preventing a ‘major disaster’

JERUSALEM (AP) — Netanyahu says passengers and crew on a FlyDubai flight managed to subdue an attacker, preventing a ‘major disaster.’ Source TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A pilot stabbed another pilot and then apparently tried to crash to aircraft carrying dozens of Israelis on Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. Passengers and crew staged a dramatic intervention to subdue the attacker and the plane eventually made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia.

The FlyDubai flight traveling from the United Arab Emirates to Israel landed safely after issuing an emergency alert and abruptly descending thousands of feet (meters). But the episode prompted Israel to scramble warplanes because it raised concerns about a possible hijacking of the plane. Netanyahu said that Saudi Arabia had arrested a pilot of the flight.

Video footage circulating on social media and reviewed by The Associated Press shows two men on the floor of the plane, with bloody wounds. Two people appear to be providing emergency medical treatment, while two others guard the cockpit. “We are guarding the pilot,” one person says in Hebrew.

In another video, passengers weep and cry out in distress as the aircraft shakes. The plane’s captain and the first officer were injured and taken to the hospital, according to a statement from the Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz International Airport in Tabuk carried by the Saudi state-run Alekhbariya television. Passengers were receiving medical attention from local authorities, according to a regional official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.

Netanyahu has warned in recent days of unspecified, heightened security threats. The country is days away from marking the anniversary of Hamas militants’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which has triggered a series of wars, and weeks away from an election.

Two pilots fought and passengers and crew interceded Around two and a half hours after leaving Dubai, the flight descended from 33,000 feet to 17,000 feet (around 10,000 meters to 5,100 meters) in about the space of a minute, before making an erratic circle close to the Jordanian border and eventually landing in Tabuk about an hour later, according to Flightradar24. As the plane began to dive, a passenger and a crew member managed to break into the cockpit, said Netanyahu, citing the passenger who he had spoken to. Other crew members then took over flying the plane.